Time to show some more of the Chimelong Safari Park – of course, I took some time to see the other animals as well as the pandas, but it’s a huge park and I didn’t quite get around to seeing it all, it definitely feels like 2 full days would be needed to really make the most of it (so will aim for that next time!) however that won’t be a cheap trip. I paid around £30 for my 1-day ticket, so a more premium zoo in China and coming the a premium price tag – for me it has a lot of pandas, so the price is worth it, but they do also have a wide range of other animals on show, including some I’ve not seen before.

Now I had tried to study the map online the night before so I could come up with a bit of a plan, but I found it quite difficult to follow and didn’t see a full list of all the species on show to go through – so I missed some that I probably would have gone to see, but that leaves some new things to see next time. There are some animals only viewable from the cablecar and the savannah/safari train ride and I didn’t do either of those (to be honest, completely forgot about the train when I was there), and I didn’t go through the dinosaur section where there are apparently live animals too. But for me, the priority is pandas, and anything else is a bonus to also see.

I entered via the South gate (the top one on the above map) where the shuttle bus brings you so on my way to the pandas I saw the flamingos and also the capybaras with a beaver – an interesting combination, but I like both, so happy to see them. Then I spent a big chunk of time at the pandas, before checking out the monkey islands (these looked like great spaces for the animals – being across the water, it meant you could only really see animals if they were at the edges of the forest habitat created, but it wasn’t too hard and I saw some good swinging action from at least a few different individuals. There were also some birds to see dotted around the park. I stopped by the meerkats before the 11:30AM opening of the second panda section, which also houses elephants, so I got to see them too – when I was there there was a keeper talk going on, there were only a few people listening so it was almost like a personal visit with the elephants with the keeper giving a lot of information (it was in Chinese, but I found it ok to understand what he was saying – it’s things like this that I realise that I must know more than I think!) and feeding the elephants some different snacks. I really liked the elephant yard, I saw 4 elephants here and the space looked good, the waterfall and pond area in particular. I happened upon the Black Swan Pavilion where you could see so many black swans on the lake – I first saw black swans at Panda Valley in Dujiangyan last year, but only 2, and here there were so many, including babies! The tiger area was particularly impressive, there were so many different landscapes and areas that the tigers were split up between. It works on a one-way system, so first was almost like a cliff-side environment, there were rock faces along the back wall and then green spaces at the front for the tigers, with a drop at the front. There were at least 3 separate yards along here, but the fences between the yards were cleverly concealed so it looked like one seamless space. Then there was another section below which was viewable through glass, this was rockier with a sandy surface, and that led onto the nursery! There was a kindergarten with several cubs living here. They had lots of toys available to play with but they were all sitting near the viewing platform – people could buy treats to throw in to the cubs for them, and they were clearly just sitting waiting for treats. Not something I really like to see which was a bit of a shame. After this was a mother living with her cubs, these cubs looked very happy and playful and were mostly interacting together and giving mum a break. And then was a further nursery with cubs in incubators – there were other animals as well in here, but also some very young tiger cubs. Again, not really something I liked to see, it was very loud in here with lots of guests pushing and shoving to get close to the incubators. After that I stopped by the giraffes, here you could also feed the giraffes which was popular, but I’ve also seen this in a number of other zoos, and the giraffes had free choice over whether they were fed or wanted to stay away (several giraffes were feeding and at least 3 or 4 were choosing to stay away from the people). The final animals I saw were the koalas, I knew there were a lot of koalas here but if the list on the wall is correct, then there are over 70 koalas! Quite an insane amount. There were both indoor and outdoor spaces, along with an education show about koalas and lots of public engagement signage. One thing I really liked was that all the koalas names are on display too. The one thing I didn’t like was that while there were lots of signs asking people to be quiet around the koalas, there was an African dance display going on between the giraffe and koala areas which was incredibly loud.